10 questions to ask your potential employer #blindpost

March 11, 2014

This is a fun one. I saw the title for this article, 10 questions to ask your potential employer, and had to write a blindpost on it. What an interesting exercise to go through. I’d love to hear examples of how people flipped the script in their interview and started interviewing the company. I can’t say anyone has ever really done that to me.

10 questions to ask your potential employer

1. Why should I work at this company over <insert 2 or 3 biggest competitors>? Why do YOU like working here?

2. What is my career track? Give me an example of a time when you had an employee like me, at the position I would be coming in at, and how they were able to move up within the organization.

3. How much autonomy do you give your employees?

4. What is your feeling toward risk-taking and failure? Do you embrace it and embody it as part of the culture?

5. How do you deal with employees that are…mean? Give me an example of a time when you had to make the tough call of letting a high performer go because they were poisoning the culture.

6. How would you describe the leadership style of this company?

7. If I asked the top five leaders what the mission and values of this company are, would they answer in the same way? What about the employees? Would you mind if I actually did that via a survey?

8. What is the average tenure of your employees?

9. Why did the last five people who left the company (their decision, not yours) state that they left?

10. Name three companies in other industries that you would aspire this company to emulate, and why.

Bonus – 11. Give me an example of an employee that blows you away. What does he or she do to “kill it” at this company?

What did I miss?

~ if you liked this blindpost, here are more you can check out. And a handful of my friends will suggest blindposts for me to write from time to time, please feel free to do that too!

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Dave Williams

turn the conversation around. instead of selling yourself start acting like a consumer!